STiR coffee and tea magazine

46 STiR coffee and tea | 2025 Quarter 4 Winter (Dec/Jan/Feb) James Astuhuamán (right) works with coffee farmers in Peru, like Ivan Gave (left) to help them become more competitive, access better markets and understand their own value. Photo credit: James Astuhuamán After Yemen's monopoly on the coffee trade was broken in the mid-17th century, coffeehouses sprang up all over Europe. Thomas Rowlandson's A Mad Dog in a Coffee- house depicts a typical rowdy London coffeehouse, ca 1800. Etching credit: US National Library of Medicine efficiencies: land dispossession and forced labor practices like slavery and debt bond- age. By removing the supply chain's two greatest costs — land and labor — colonial capitalists maximized profits and kept prices artificially low. For forced laborers toiling on tropical plantations who shared none of these ben- efits, this was exploitation. By design, colonial powers established the coffee trade to channel wealth and power to landowners, merchants, financiers, and the political empires that enforced the system. Post-Colonial Power Structures Revolutionaries across Latin America achieved independence from colonial rule in the 19th century, driven by the same liberal ideals that inspired their forebears in the United States and France. However, as in the American South and Haiti, the ideals of freedom, equality, and brotherhood did not translate to widespread economic self- determination, never mind in the coffee trade. Newly independent nations remained dependent on the lopsided trade model, which exported cheaply produced green coffee to Europe and the United States, and imported capital and knowledge- intensive industrial farming equipment, such as depulpers, mills, dryers, and sepa- rators. This structure placed value cre- ation and profit-making in the so-called industrialized Global North while en- couraging landowners in the so-called de- veloping Global South to continue pro- ducing as much cheap coffee as possible. Coffee estate owners, often descen- dants of the original European settlers or newly arrived foreign investors, con- tinued utilizing land and labor to increase production and cut costs. In collabo- ration with governments eager for tax revenue from coffee exports, plantation owners lobbied for liberal reforms that privatized land by forcibly removing in- digenous citizens who couldn't produce a valid title. Even though many indigenous communities viewed land as communal, they were subject to the laws of liberal bureaucrats seeking progress in the form of increased coffee exports. These colonial-era structures made coffee-producing nations fundamentally vulnerable, rendering them price-takers as the price-makers of the Global North amassed greater power and shifted to- ward a free market economy. The lack of economic diversification and limited infrastructure in many former colonies, particularly in Africa, further constrained their agency and ability to add value in the coffee supply chain. The nations sup- plying green coffee were at a structural disadvantage, mirroring colonial-era im- balances. Inequality Persists Into the 20th Century and Beyond The Industrial Revolution in the Global North significantly increased demand for coffee, as both factory owners and workers embraced its stimulating power. Transportation innovations like railways and steamships accelerated the flow of green coffee to northern ports, fueling a booming consumer market and further entrenching the power imbalance. While consuming countries developed value- adding innovations, such as mechanical roasters and instant coffee, producers re- mained locked into export-oriented roles from colonial times.

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